Search for Past Stories by Key Word Stories from the Week of December 24, 2001 Monday: Oberlin College Is in Winter Shutdown Between December 24 and January 1 Oberlin College is in Winter Shutdown, and most College offices and facilities will be closed. During this period Oberlin Online is featuring some favorite photos and stories from earlier in the school year. Readers wishing for more news and features may click on the Past Stories button (above) to see what they may have missed. Oberlin Online will begin special Winter Term coverage January 2 and return to its usual news format January 30. Monday: Shansi: Something to Write Home About In a trendy fish restaurant on the slopes of volcanic Mt. Rafi in Indonesia, Dan Wilder '99 began his two-year experience abroad, eating a fish head. "The eyeballs were pretty tasty," he says. Wilder spent two years in Yogyakarta, on the island of Java, Indonesia, studying Indonesian and teaching English as part of Shansi’s Postgraduate Fellowship Program. Monday: OC Student Defeats International Chess Master International chess master Calvin Blocker came to Oberlin last Friday to play a simultaneous exhibition against any and all challengers. As part of the promotional effort, $1000 was offered in prize money to any challenger who could beat Blocker. In past contests, nobody has defeated visiting international chess masters, but that is exactly what Jonathan Hirsch '05 did during this year's competition. Monday: Oberlin Dedicates New C.B. Fisk Organ With Live Concert Broadcasts On Friday, September 28, Finney Chapel will resonate with the sounds of Oberlin College's new, 4,014 pipe organ, played in concert for the first time. The live Oberlin broadcasts on WCLV can also be enjoyed from the station's website. The dedication of The Kay Africa Memorial organ, built by C. B. Fisk, Inc., of Gloucester, Massachusetts, is the centerpiece of a weekend of concerts and events. Tuesday: Oberlin College Students Attend Econference 2001 Winston Vaughan '03 and Yuri Futamura '02 will attend this weekend's Econference 2001 in Washington, D.C. Vaughan, who serves as chair of the National Student Forum for the student PIRG's, and Futamura, the co-chair, will be joined by 50 students from Oberlin College at the three-day conference. Tuesday: Oberlin College’s Football Team Wins its First Game of the Season The Oberlin College football team won its first game of the season and its first game in more than three years by defeating Kenyon College 53-22 in a North Coast Athletic Conference game at Dill Field last Saturday. With the win, the Yeomen snapped a 44 game losing streak. The last time the Yeomen had a victory was in 1997, when they defeated Thiel College 18-17. The Yeomen now have a record of 1-5 overall and 1-3 in the NCAC. Photos and video footage of the Yeomen's victory are available online. Tuesday: Online Resource Guide Helps Opera Theater Students Not long ago, gathering information for a research paper meant a simple trip to the library. Today it often means a foray into cyberspace--to gather information from various web sites or to look up primary source material. Undergraduates across the nation are confronting these new electronic resources head-on, often with help from professors and librarians who recognize the challenge their students now face. At the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Victoria Vaughan and Kathy Abromeit have created an online resource guide for Vaughan's Opera Theater students, eliminating much of the students' guesswork and increasing their information literacy skills. Wednesday: Dan Chaon Talks About Fame, Fortune and Fiction Dan Chaon, assistant professor of creative writing, has been nominated as one of five finalists for a National Book Award in fiction. Chaon's latest effort, Among the Missing, has been praised by critics across the country and was recently the subject of a full-page review in The New York Times. Among the Missing, published in July 2001, is a collection of 12 short stories that deal with the theme of loss. The popularity of Chaon's literary efforts has elicited attention on Oberlin's campus, too. Here's what the author has to say about the recent praise for Among the Missing. Wednesday: Obies Help Eastwood First and Second Graders Animate the Alphabet For students in Rian Brown-Orso's advanced video class, fall break was the perfect opportunity to test the skills they had acquired during the first half of the semester. Brown-Orso, assistant professor of new media, and five students from her class visited Eastwood Elementary School, where they filmed first and second graders for a stop-motion animation video. Wednesday: Nita Karpf Turns Traditional Musicology Upside Down For Juanita Karpf, music, gender and sexuality are not mutually exclusive ideas. Karpf, a visiting assistant professor of women's studies, has made a career for herself by finding the connections between these and other themes in traditional and popular musical genres. During her first semester at Oberlin, Karpf taught Music, Gender and Sexuality, a colloquium for first-year students. The course focuses on four landmark texts and examines the issues of gender and sexuality in the study of traditional musicology. Thursday: First-year Student Shares Her Passion For the Environment In third grade, Shoshana Friedman '05 announced that she wanted to be an environmental activist when she grew up. Her strong connection to the earth has led her to Oberlin, where she has already declared a major in environmental studies. And as only one of 12 recipients of Massachusett's Henry David Thoreau Scholarship this past year, Friedman has been recognized as an individual with the potential to affect positive change in the way humans respond to their environment in the future. Thursday: Powers Travel Grants Send 11 Abroad on Research Projects The College's Committee on Research and Development recently distributed among 11 faculty members $39,038 in H.H. Powers travel grants. Nine awards fund travel for projects in Europe, two fund research in Japan, one award funds research in China and one award funds research in the Caribbean. Thursday: Oberlin Students Compete in VentureQuest 2002 While most upperclassmen are worrying about graduation requirements and final exams, junior R. Jon MacDonald and senior Robert T. Moffatt are busy recruiting employees and balancing the budget for their company, Lo Fat Fitness. "Lo Fat Fitness gets people to start exercising if they are not exercising, and provides them with professional help to accomplish their goals," MacDonald says. "We can do this on an individual level, or for an entire company of employees." Friday: Oberlin Student Puts Classroom Theory to the Test Senior Aaron Manheim admits that he was hoping to fulfill a requirement toward graduation when he signed up for Environmental Studies 320: Gender, Nature, and Culture. What he didn't expect were the benefits the service-oriented class would provide him with, both in and out of the classroom. Friday: Exhibition of Student Artwork On View at Cleveland's Here Here Gallery Families and ancestors seen through the lens of the Yoruba culture of West Africa inform an exhibition of art installations by eight Oberlin College students now on view at Cleveland's Here Here Gallery. Translations of Ashé: Transforming Space--Art as a Ritual is the title of the show, which opened Friday with a reception featuring interpretative performances by the student artists. The exhibition will continue through January 25 at the Cleveland venue. Friday: Sunday's New York Times Profiles D.A. Henderson Last Sunday's New York Times profiled D.A. Henderson '50, who recently was named head of the Bush administration's new Office of Public Health Preparedness. As director of this office, Henderson--who led the World Health Organization's smallpox eradication program from 1966 to 1977 and who founded the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies in 1997--will help the Department of Health and Human Services forge alliances with law enforcement and intelligence authorities to create a bioterrorism defense plan for the U.S. Government.